The orchestral piece Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune – Debussy’s most frequently performed work – was inspired by a poem by the symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé, in which a faun meditates on his real or imagined experiences of love. Both the uncertain tonality and the solemnity of the music faithfully reflect the artist’s ambivalent relationship to reality. Francis Poulenc composed his Concert champêtre (Pastoral concerto) for harpsichord and orchestra in 1928. With his studies in composition completed not long before, Poulenc’s harpsichord concerto was one of his first mature works. It was around this time that the neoclassical style initiated by Stravinsky came into fashion, reviving the Baroque and Classical composition methods with strong melodies and distinct rhythms. This is the style that characterises this concerto by Poulenc, which follows the time-honoured, traditional three-movement structure (fast–slow–fast). The name of Argentine composer Ariel Ramírez is all but synonymous with his most famous creation, the Misa Criolla (Creole Mass). Ramírez studied the music of his homeland at length, and, after the Second Vatican Council permitted mass to be celebrated in modern national languages, this work became one of the first masses built on national traditions in all its elements (melody, rhythm and instrumentation). The composer’s six-movement cantata Navidad Nuestra (Our Christmas) was composed around the same time. Presented by: Zugló Philharmonia

Presented by: